QI

Host Sandi Toksvig is in search of victory with panellists Rob Beckett, Daliso Chaponda, Lara Ricote and Alan Davies.

Topics

- The V for Victory sign was invented by Belgian refugee lawyer Victor Laveleye. In the 1940s, the BBC asked him to produce a radio series called Radio Belgique, to be transmitted to German-occupied Belgium. In 1941, he encouraged Belgians to give the V sign as a rallying sign, because it worked across different languages: "victory" in English, "victoire" in French and "vreiheit" in Flemish. He sent the message over the radio by playing the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, as V is five in Roman numerals, and the opening notes sound like the Morse code for the letter V (...-). (Forfeit: Winston Churchill)

- Tangent: Churchill took up the V sign symbol, calling it: "the symbol of the unconquerable will of the people of the occupied territories." However, he didn't fully understand it to begin with, and used to do the sign the wrong was round, so the back of the hand face the crowd. This though was part of the reason the sign became popular, as people thought it was funny to do it the wrong way around. While Churchill did not invent the V sign, he did invent the words "seaplane", "out-tray", "commando" and "social security".

- XL Tangent: Churchill has a terrible inability to use the letter S. As a child, he kept being taught to say: "The Spanish ships I cannot sea for they are not in sight." Then, an American masseuse told him that his tongue was restrained by a ligament which nobody else had. Later in life, Churchill's speech impediment became a trademark of his. When he had dentures made, he got his dentist to make a special plate so that saliva could flow underneath it and he could protect his distinctive sound. When he was a reporter during a Boer War, he was captured within two weeks, but managed to escape, and his wanted poster said that he made a guttural sound in his throat.

- Tangent: Sandi asks Lara, who grew up in Miami and Mexico City, if she learned about Churchill. She says she heard of him, but wasn't important in her life. Churchill does have American connections, because after he lost the 1945 election and became Leader of the Opposition, he campaigned in the 1950 election with the slogan: "Make Britain Great Again". The panel say that while the slogan is good, similar slogan have been ruined by Donald Trump, although Daliso finds it hard to say his name. Joking that "Trump" is now bad luck to say, Rob claims he no longer plays Top Trumps, Daliso says he doesn't fart anymore, and Alan says he hasn't grabbed a pussy in years, leading Sandi to say: "I feel so bad cos I cannot say the same thing".

- Vegetables can scupper a Spitfire because of aerodynamics. WWII aircraft were held together by rivets, and when the Spitfire was being developed the standard rivet used in building aircraft had a little domed head that stuck out. Concerned whether this affected the aerodynamics, rather than build two prototypes which would be expensive, they built just one using new flat-headed rivets. They then glued half a split pea to each rivet to replicate the domed head, then removed the peas section-by-section, analysing the difference. Doing this, they worked out that flat rivets increased the top speed by 22mph.

- XL Tangent: The Spitfire's chief designer, RJ Mitchell, didn't like the name. When he learned that the air ministry were planning on calling it that, he said: "It's the sort of bloody silly name they would give it." He wanted to call it either the Shrew or the Scarab. Robert McLane, chairman of aircraft manufacturer Supermarine, named the plane Spitfire after the nickname he gave to his daughter. The word "Spitfire" originally came from cannons in the 1600s. This leads Sandi to ask if the panellists had nicknames as kids. Lara says she tried to make "Lure" work, but failed. Daliso was "Chapati", based on his surname. Rob was nicknamed "Fat German" and "Jaffa Cake Nips". The last of these came from the fact that as a kid he had big nipples. One of Rob's brother had a spotty back, so he was nicknamed "Dartboard Back", while another of his brother's was called "Dogshit Breath".

- XL Tangent: Spitfires did not get off to a good start. In the early morning of 6th September 1939, the RAF coastal defence system noticed an unidentified aircraft approaching over the Essex coast. In what became known as the Battle of Barking Creek, over 100 planes were scrambled from various different sections, including 12 Spitfires in a squadron led by Flight Lieutenant Adolph "Sailor" Malan, spotted the rogue aircraft and shot it down in what was the first Spitfire kill of the war. However, as there was no way of distinguishing enemy planes from English planes, it turned out the first plane shot down by a Spitfire was an RAF Hurricane, and the first man killed by a Spitfire during the war was British Pilot Officer Montague Hulton-Harrop.

- A small victory that would vex an employer who undervalues you can come in the form of malicious compliance. In 1507, German artist Albrecht Durer was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for a church in Frankfurt by wealthy local merchant Jakob Heller. Durer was based in Nuremberg, but was keen to have his work seen in Frankfurt because prints of his work could be sold at the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is still going on today. Durer realised that the altarpiece, The Assumption and Coronation of the Virgin, was going to take a lot longer than he originally thought, so he asked Heller for a rise, but Heller refused. As revenge, he added a small portrait of himself in the middle of the picture, underneath the Virgin Mary, carrying a board advertising what he could do for a living. Thus his altarpiece contains his business card in the middle of it. The altarpiece of later destroyed in a fire in 1729, but copies survive and one is in the Frankfurt Historical Museum.

- Tangent: When Bill Clinton left the White House, before George W. Bush came in Clinton's staff went around all the keyboards and removed all the "W" keys.

- XL Tangent: Other examples of malicious compliance include a story about the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg, Denmark. They commissioned Jens Haaning to recreate a previous work of his in which he has used real cash fixed to the canvas. For the piece, the museum supplied him with Danish kroner banknotes worth other £60,000, and he was also paid an artist's fee. When the artwork arrived, the museum received two completely empty frames and Haaning claimed he made an artwork called: "Take the Money and Run". The museum did display it, seeing the funny side of it, but a legal case resulted and in the end Haaning had to pay the money back, but he kept the artist's fee.

- XL Tangent: Another malicious compliance incident took place at video game developer Maxis, the creators of 'The Sims' and similar titles. In 1996, they made a game called 'SimCopter', and one developer, Jacques Servin, as a protest against the number of scantily clad women there are in games and the lack of gay representation, secretly added a code to the game so on certain days topless men in Speedos popped up and started kissing each other. Servin was fired, and he went on to become a professor of art at a college in Greenwich Village.

- XL Tangent: There was a secret thing in a football video game where if you did a certain combination, Eric Cantona would run off the field and attack someone in the stand, in reference to the infamous kung-fu kick he did in a real-life match. In another game, there is a cheat code where Ruud van Nistelrooy's head would change into the head of a horse, because he looked like a horse in real-life.

- XL Tangent: A tiny railway station in Duncraig in the Scottish Highlands was opened in 1897. It was meant to be shut down in the 1960s as part of the Beeching cuts, but the train drivers refused to acknowledge it just kept stopping there anyway. They did this for 11 years, until British Rail finally relented and let the station remain open.

- XL: A Victory Vertical was a piano designed for WWII troops. Steinway made pianos specifically to be dropped onto battlefields to improve soldiers' morale, which were also called the "Instrument of the Immortals". At the start of the war, Steinway were banned from making pianos because the material needed to make them is also needed to make wartime equipment. However, the company's president had four sons, all of whom were serving in the military, and he managed to get a contract to produce these pianos, and they were parachuted into battle. The first was dropped in 1942, and they tried to use a tenth of the metal an average piano uses. About 2,500 were sent out to every single theatre of the war.

- XL Tangent: Something else sent to the troops to improve morale during the war was Armed Serviced editions (ASE) of books. These were cheap paperbacks there were shaped to fit into a pocket, were attached with staples instead of glue because tropical insects eat glue, and were designed to only be read six times. 123 million novels were sent to US troops overseas. One of the novels used for this was 'The Great Gatsby', which some believe held made the book the success it became. Most of the books used were classics, but one odder title Sandi came across was a romance called 'O Genteel Lady!' by Esther Forbes.

- XL: When Queen Victoria sat on the throne, the thing she first demanded was an hour alone. Victoria did not expect to be queen, because when she was born she was fifth in line to the throne, and her father was the youngest son of four of George III. All the older brothers died without legitimate issue. Victoria was brought up with something called the Kensington System. Her mother, the Duchess of Kent, and her mother's attendant, Sir John Conroy, brought her up and Victoria was never left alone. She was not allowed to go downstairs without holding somebody's hand, she was only allowed to play with her half sister and Conroy's daughter, and thus never experienced a moment by herself. As soon as she became queen, the first thing she wanted was an hour on her own, and the second thing was her own bedroom.

- XL Tangent: Queen Victoria had nine children, but didn't like babies. She said: "An ugly baby is a very nasty object, and the prettiest are frightful when undressed, as long as they have their big boy and little limbs and that terrible frog-like action."

- A nonviolent way to gain victory over a Viking is to challenge them to a game. Hnefatafl was a game similar to chess with the king in the middle surrounded by guards, and four enemy groups around the edges. The one playing the king has to try and get him to the edge of the board, while the opposition tries to stop him. The game has been played probably since about 400AD. There were more violent games however. Hnutukast involved throwing bones at each other, and games often ended with people fighting and being killed. Skinnnleikr involved throwing animal skins at each other while standing on benches, and again could be violent.

- Tangent: Daliso suggests that best way to gain victory is to convert the Viking to Christianity. The Jelling Stone Museum in Denmark has items made by silversmiths to cast jewellery which would display both Thor's hammer and the Christian cross on the same item. Rob asks if Thor is more than just a film character, leading the panel to talk about other forms of mythology. Daliso has a fear about what if another religion was right, and that no-one is praying to Thor, leading to Alan comment that a lot of people are praying to Chris Hemsworth.

- Tangent: Rob says that when he goes to Copenhagen, locals automatically assume he is Danish due to his appearance. Some people even think Rob is pretending to be English.

- Tangent: The most violent board game today is Monopoly. According to one survey, 37.4% of people admit to having a screaming match over a game. After Monoploy, chess and Scrabble are the games that cause the most fights. Sandi plays a version called "accent Scrabble", where plays pick a regional accent, and you can have words if you can justify the spelling in that accent. Men are more likely to get angry during board games than women, and 31.1% of adults admit to arguing with a child over a board game. Sandi ends the segment with a joke saying that if you treat a Viking to a board game, they might not raid your community chest, which only one woman in the audience laughs at. Sandi thus stands up and shakes the hand of the woman who laughed, who turns out to work at Monopoly Lifesize as a battleship token.

- Sandi gives the panel wine to drink, and then asks what the ideal volume of urine to put into the wine. In the 18th century, French warships used wine vinegar to cool down cast iron cannons after firing. The water in the vinegar turned to steam, which carried away the heat, and the acetic acid cleaned the metal and prevented corrosion. When the Seven Years Wars broke out in 1756 more vinegar was needed, but it takes a long time to turn wine into vinegar, so unscrupulous contractors started to get their workers to urinate in the wine so it would add some acid and it would "pass" as vinegar. By chance, they discovered that putting urine into wine causes it to ferment rather like vinegar. French chemist Jacques Francois de Machy worked out that the ideal ration of urine to wine is one part in 50.

General Ignorance

- Nazi uniforms were designed by artist Karl Diebitsch of the SS and graphic designer Walter Heck. Hugo Boss was one of several manufacturers of Nazi uniforms, but it was not one of the bigger ones and he did not do any of the designing. (Forfeit: Hugo Boss)

- XL Tangent: The Nazi uniforms worn by the actors in 'Indiana Jones And The Last Crusad' were actual uniforms from the war. Designers Anthony Powell and Joanna Johnston found a cache of original uniforms and used them in the movie.

- The extreme weather condition that killed the most French troops during Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812 was primarily a heatwave. The troops set off for Moscow in June, and the weather in what is now Belarus was very hot. Also, the troops were wearing thick uniforms, having water shortages, had lice, and were marching 35 miles a day. Before the first proper engagement with the Russians at the Battle of Borodino on 7th September, 150,000 or Napoleon's 600,000 had been lost. He lost an average of 5,000 men a day. He then lost more to the cold as the army left Russia.

- XL Tangent: A quarter of a million soldiers took part in the Battle of Borodino, and it was probably the bloodiest day in the whole of the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon won, but it is now considered a Pyrrhic victory - i.e. while he won the battle, it lost him the war and probably the crown too. The term "Pyrrhic" comes from Pyrrhus, how on a battle against the Romans but lost his war with them.

- The panel are played "God Save the King" and are asked which country has the tune as their national anthem. The answer is Liechtenstein. Several pieces of music use the same tune, such as the USA where "My Country, 'Tis of Thee" has the same tune. The similar tune has result in confusion. For example, in 2010 the Scottish FA had to issue an apology after fans jeered the Liechtenstein national anthem. No-one knows who wrote the tune. (Forfeit: Ours)

- XL: The British national anthem has no name, because Britain has no official national anthem. It has never been codified as one, but it is a royal anthem. (Forfeit: God Save the King)

- Tangent: In 2012, the Performing Rights Society found that "God Save the Queen" as it was called at the time was the second most recognised piece of music in the UK. The piece of music that came first was the theme tune for EastEnders.

Scores

- Daliso Chaponda: -7 points
- Lara Ricote: -16 points
- Rob Beckett: -18 points
- Alan Davies: -24 points